The Pieces of What Was
by too many stars to count
Summary: Ron watches his family mourn and tries to figure out how to live this new life. Please read and review!


**A/N:** This was a comment fic written for the prompt "Ron - post-war - How do you pick up the threads of an old life?". I hope you enjoy it and please review!

The Pieces of What Was

He doesn't know how to keep going.

He also doesn't know how to go back to just being Ron, to who he was before the War started. So he doesn't try. His old life seems foreign and impossibly simple. Instead Ron tries to build a new life.

Ron doesn't stay at the Burrow after the battle. _Can't_stay there is more accurate.

He can't look at Mum's clock without seeing the fallen hand that had been laying at the bottom of the clock once they came home from the battle.

Mum can barely look at the clock, period.

He stayed at the Burrow for two nights. Mum didn't cry or cook all day as he'd half expected. Instead she bustled around comforting everyone in sight.

At night though he could he her cry. The first night wasn't too bad. But on the second night, when he realized Dad was crying now, Mum's soft, soothing voice lost in the sobs racking her husband, Ron knew he needed to leave

He can't look at Bill or Charlie with out seeing how lost they look that they were unable, for the first time, to protect one of their younger siblings. Sure Ron's been in danger before, life threatening danger really, but they were never _there_when it was happening and he'd always made it out okay.

But now they're both trapped in the certainty that Fred would be alive if they had done something differently. It doesn't matter that it's not true, the grief is easier to bear if they have someone to blame and Dolohov's dead. Percy had caught up with him after all.

Ron looks at Ginny and all he can think is how sorry he is. He knows enough about what happened at Hogwarts to know that his sister has survived hell for the second time. He tries to remember her before the chamber and finds it difficult.

The Ginny he knows now has been strong and self-reliant for over five years now. He can't reconcile the Ginny from before his Second Year - happy, open with her emotions, never stopping to think about what was coming out of her mouth - with the Ginny of after. The Ginny who had a closed secret smile now, the one who still shudders at the sight of red ink and who keeps all of her secrets to herself now that diaries have become unbearable.

It's still blessedly easy to gather her in his arms though and she cries and it reminds him so much of being nine and doing the same thing when she fell out of an apple tree on their property.

Percy has become George's shadow. He never says anything about Fred, and he doesn't follow George too closely, but the haunted look Ron sees in his eyes when Percy thinks no one is looking tells him the truth; Percy has lost one brother. He will not let another get away.

Between Percy and himself, they get George back to functioning at least. He eats, showers, and tries to sleep, but Ron knows he's not okay yet.

One day Ron goes to the joke shop by himself and looks around the back room. He spots a sheet of notes about one of their unfinished inventions and takes it to the burrow with him. He sits in his old room for a few hours looking at the notes they'd made and drawing diagrams on a new sheet of parchment.

Hours later he finds George in the sitting room and shows him the notes both old and new. "If you try a freezing charm on the jar it will keep the jar cool without killing the fire." He's not entirely sure what the item they were trying to build is, but he does know they kept killing their own fires by accident.

Slowly George takes the notes from him. "We've tried a freezing charm." His voice is hoarse but it's there and that's enough for Ron.

"I was thinking we could try it on the inside of the glass, instead of casting it on the entire jar. And Hermione knows a great spell for small containable fires. They burn blue but I'm sure we could figure out a way to change that." Ron said pulling a diagram he'd drawn free of the pile of parchment to show George.

After a long while, long enough that Ron thinks he's made a mistake, George nods. "We're going to need to go to the shop to work on this." George informs him. "Mum will have kittens if we accidentally let a fire loose in the sitting room."

Ron realizes then that he can't go back. As much as he wants to the only choice now is to try and fit the pieces of what _was_ into what _is_.


End file.
